Change

Detroit Steve checks in:

The fact check of the Meet the Press segment with Bill Nye and Blackburn brought out a key issue we are facing. The equilibrium state of our oceans is projected to be 60-80 rise [feet] at the current levels of CO2. So, if this is an accurate assessment, how quickly would this happen if levels of CO2 stayed the same (they will not) and more importantly at what cost and how fast could we pull out of our the atmosphere the CO2 we have put into it? Surely 60 foot rise is not an acceptable out come. These processes are magnitudes slower that the Titanic changing course.

Here is the original article and the out take.... 

Blackburn tries to downplay the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by talking about the amounts in very, very small decimals. Which they are: If I took $400 versus $320 out of your million dollars, you wouldn't be terribly upset. But that's intentionally misleading. The difference between the two is an increase of 25 percent over the past 50 years — after thousands and thousands of years of it being lower. Last year, The New York Times explained that the level of carbon dioxide now in our atmosphere is a "concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years." And at that point, "the world’s ice caps were smaller, and the sea level might have been as much as 60 or 80 feet higher."
Why hasn't that happened now? Because "it takes a long time to melt ice," as one scientist told the Times. But we're getting there.

OK, suppose global warming is happening. Or this rise in temperature triggers another ice-age through some as yet unexplained mechanism.

What can be done? Are we doing any of those things? Are they having a measurable impact? Will they ever?

Would getting rid of the Republicans and their obstructionist ways help? How about the Democrats and their politically correct Fascism?
I'm beginning to think that The Fifth Element  was a prophetic vision, not just a comic book fantasy.
I'm reading The Cobweb by Stephen Bury (aka Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George, aka George Jewsbury), which portrays our political process in horrifically realist manner.